Confident of victory, Jim Jordan marched into the Capitol on Tuesday wearing a gold-colored tie. The 59-year-old from Ohio was sure he was in for a sensation. He would finally reach the top and be elected as the new speaker of the US House of Representatives. Donald Trump’s MAGA movement would be back at the center of power in Washington.
Jim Jordan didn’t just want to lead the House of Representatives from now on. In an emergency, he would also be number two in the succession plan for the presidency. He would rank right behind Vice President Kamala Harris – he, whom his own party colleague described as a “legislative terrorist.” The parliamentary terrorist voted against everything in Congress in 16 years, did not initiate a single legislative project and boasted of being on the right-wing edge of the party in all evaluations. To do this, he first helped his mentor and confidant Donald Trump as best he could to stage a coup against Joe Biden and then successfully saved him from being convicted in the impeachment proceedings.
But as of Friday afternoon, Jordan had still not managed to rally the necessary majority of Republican representatives behind him. In a first round of voting on Tuesday, he lost 20 of his party’s votes, and on Wednesday he lost 22. On Thursday, Jordan canceled a new election attempt at the last minute and tried to postpone the matter until January and to leave temporary speaker Patrick McHenry in office until then . But in addition to the criticism from the moderate Republicans, who had already refused to vote for him, this now also earned him the censure of the other right-wing hardliners.
McCarthy had weakened less
So Jordan entered the third round on Friday morning. “The lost votes can come back, there have been several rounds of voting for the Speaker before,” said the former wrestler when he arrived at Congress. Only to lose three more votes, from representatives from New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Kevin McCarthy had weakened less when he had to endure 15 rounds of voting in January before he won a majority.
The more moderate MPs, including a group from New York, fear that the party would be completely surrendered to Donald Trump if his puppet were to become speaker. Those who come from districts with many Democratic voters do not want to take part in this for fear of failing to win re-election. Influential budget politicians consider Jordan unelectable because he is unwilling to discuss the matter and has already wanted to let the country slide into insolvency several times.
With the help of right-wing media, Jordan launched a pressure campaign against his opponents. The telephone numbers of the MPs were published and death threats were immediately received. This angered the moderates so much that they even refused to vote for him. How Jordan still wants to win her over remains to be seen; so far it’s not even clear whether he’ll give up or carry on. He indicated he would call for more votes over the weekend, to the annoyance of his tired council colleagues.
Wild scenarios
Before the Republican Conference withdrew for further discussions on Friday afternoon, the wildest scenarios were circulating as to how the dispute over direction could turn out. Even a formulated motion to remove temporary speaker Patrick McHenry made the rounds among right-wing hardliners. They fear that the moderate Republicans could join forces with the Democrats and confirm McHenry in office.
The US Congress has not had a quorum for more than two weeks. He should urgently discuss President Joe Biden’s loan requests of $105 billion for Israel and Ukraine and agree on a new national budget by the end of November.